How to Optimize Google AdWords with 3 Free Tips

Here are three free tips from Finch on how to optimize your Google AdWords campaigns. We use these techniques to boost performance when we do your pay per click account management.

Tip number 1: Calculate your maximum cost per click separately for each match type. The first time you set up an AdWords campaign, did you enter the same bid for everything? I thought so! For people just starting their AdWords accounts, they will typically set a single maximum bid amount for an entire campaign.

This is the worst way to do it, because each keyword and match type has a different conversion rate and should be worth a different amount. You should be willing to pay more for keywords that convert higher. Additionally, paying less for keywords with a lower conversion rate leads to more profitable pay per click.

Using Google’s “Tennis Shoes” example: If you enter “tennis shoes,” it’s entered as a broad match by default. But if you enter all match types separately, then you can bid them separately based on their conversion rates.

Tip number 2: A simple way to optimize AdWords campaigns is to combine them. It’s better to have one campaign with a $10,000 daily budget than having 5 campaigns with $2,000 daily budgets. Though it’s good to organize your campaigns, it will also limit their daily potential. Unless all campaigns are maxing out their budget, then it’s best to share the total allowable budget between campaigns so that they are allowed to “borrow” from each other.

Tip number 3: Improve ads by targeting those with the most impressions and lowest click through rate. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Continuous improvement is a secret to long-term performance.

Click on the campaign you want to work on, select the Ads tab, and set the data range to Last 30 days.

Click on the Impressions header to sort your ads to put the ads with the most impressions on top.

Among the top 25 ads, look for those with the lowest click through rate (CTR), click on the Ad Group link, pause the least performing ads, and add new ones.

Keep track of the ads you are changing (for example, in an excel file), and check next week for improvement.

Bonus Tip: Sign up with Finch today. Finch handles the first two tips for you as part of our service. On tip number 3 – using our granular campaign structure allows you to pinpoint which keywords and ads need your attention the most. Sign up today for your complementary audit so that we can show you how applying these tips will help your AdWords results improve.